Thursday, 7 June 2007

covers- THREE PIECE SUIT

I went about this one in an unusual way. I pecilled a few little groups of figures (1-sample):Alec and the figures of Life and Death from The Dance of Lifey Death (being one of the three books in the collection). On the original cover for Dark Horse Alec was caught up in their mad terpsichorean cavorting; in this version he becomes their fiddler. The initial sketches were loose and then began to get tighter, but curiously smaller and smaller until I was looking at a couple of options each of which was about one-inch square. Out of these tiny groups of figures I enlarged the two that looked most promising. I inked these two and tidied them up before we scanned greyscale at several hundred percent. Then we converted to bitmap. Mick Evans, who was doing all the design work on my books at this time, treated one of these in a cubist manner (2), colourng it in photoshop with flat sharp edged colours and we used that for the solicitation image. When it came to making final decisions I went with the other enlarged drawing (3) and tried a different approach altogether. I modelled it fully and carefully with coloured pencils on an overlay (4). Then we dropped the black line drawing over it (5) for the finished cover, the point being the contrast of different scales, but I'm not sure that works as the drawing tends to hide its tiny origin. If I ever reuse this design, I shall not put the black line on top, but simply pencil some details of face and hands onto the colour layer, which I like for its clean simplicity, and print from that.Top Shelf have it.*******Joe McCulloch reviews The Black Diamond Detective Agency*****First second reveals its catalogue for fall 2007*******Naked `Tony Blair' at Art Exhibition. Washington Post (Via AP) June 6, "This is a biblical allegory _ Adam and Eve expelled from paradise _ and this is Blair's legacy," Sandle said, calling the Iraq war "disgraceful."********Looted Art Found in Nazi Dealer's Safe Businessweek.com- Jun 6A number of masterpieces believed to have been looted by the Nazis have been found in a Swiss bank safe, the Zurich prosecutor's office said Tuesday, confirming earlier reports in the German media. The paintings include works by Monet, Renoir and Pissarro, reported the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. The safe was rented by Bruno Lohse, an art historian and dealer commissioned by the Nazis to assess works of art looted from Jewish people in territories occupied by the Nazis, especially France, the report said. Lohse died in March aged 95. *********Warner offers free music over the internet - London Times- June 7Lala.com, which received $14 million (£7 million) in funding from Bain Capital and Ignition Partners, the venture capital firms, will pay Warner a royalty each time that a user listens to a track. The streaming service will, in effect, be a loss-leader. Lala.com aims to make money by selling downloads, but has suggested that it could lose as much as $40 million in the next two years. It added that it is in talks with other labels to launch similar tie-ups.*******in other news:CHILDREN"S BOOZE!: AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Just add water! Dutch students have developed powdered alcohol which they say can be sold legally to minors.